Re Proprietary/Confdential agreements and reports:

VA has a FOI statute, and the following is EXCEPTED from access (I helped
write this almost 20 years ago and the legislature hasn'd messed with it --
keep our fingers crossed!)

"20. Data, records or information of a proprietary nature produced or
collected by or for faculty or
staff of public institutions of higher education, other than the
institutions' financial or administrative
records, in the conduct of or as a result of study or research on medical,
scientific, technical or
scholarly issues, whether sponsored by the institution alone or in
conjunction with a governmental
body or a private concern, where such data, records or information has not
been publicly released,
published, copyrighted or patented."

All agreements MUST comply with this.

Our General Counsel and I are agreed that "financial or administrative
records" include the demographic data about each agreement: Sponsor, dates,
amount, PI, and title.  If there is any question about confidentiality or a
"don't even tell people you are doing work for us" clause, we bring to
their attention both the FOI act and the exception.  Further, we tell them
that we do not care whate the TITLE of the project is, just that we have
one. So, if the company names it "Studies of Compound Z-66-MU" we do not
care, and the title contains no information of an industrial intelligence
type.  The name of the PI might tell a competetor that the company is
interested in problems solvable by an electrical engineer whose
specializatin is "x".

In short, dealing with a university presents an industry some slight risk
of a competetor gaining some knolwdge, but careful collaboration minimizes
this risk.

NEVER FORGET:  The industrial environemnt and the university environment
are not the same.  They do have overlap.  Keep your interactions in the
overlap and you can make win-win situations.  Once you get outside of the
overlap, it becomes at best a zero sum game: for me to win, you must loose.
 Don't go there.

Always be prepared to teach this lesson to your commercial counterparts and
you will end up with much better university industry relations.

Chuck

At 08:10 AM 9/27/99 -0500, you wrote:
>I am struggling with disclosure of information about research projects
here at Miss. State.  We submit a monthly report to our Board detailing
each project awarded during the past month.  The report contains:  PI
names, Unit Name, Title, Sponsor, Amount.  My questions are:
>
>What information do you display in your monthly detail reports?
>
>For proprietary or other information-restricted projects, do you modify
the information reported in your monthly reports?
>
>If so, how do you modify this information?
>
>Thanks in advance.
>
>Matt
>
>Matthew Ronning
>Sponsored Programs
>Mississippi State University
>p:  662/325-7404
>f:  662/325-3803
>xxxxxx@spa.msstate.edu
>www.msstate.edu/Dept/SPA/
>
>
> Instructions on how to use the RESADM-L Mailing List, including
> subscription information and a web-searchable archive, are available
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>
Herbert B. Chermside, CRA
Director, Sponsored Programs Administration
Virginia Commonwealth University
PO BOX 980568
Richmond, VA  23298-0568
Express Delivery Only:
 Sanger Hall, Rm. 1-073
 11th & Marshall Streets
 Richmond, VA  23219
Voice:  804-828-6772
Fax     804-828-2521
OFFICE e-mail   xxxxxx@VCU.EDU
Personal e-mail xxxxxx@vcu.edu
http://views.vcu.edu/views/ospa/

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